Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
speciality: Anthropology

The professors are high-calibre scholars, however, this school’s career office, psychology office and other administrative offices are useless but just to exist as a formality to build a “school”, with administrative staffs inside who are insentitive to global south’s students’ needs. Basically their career counselling sessions, psychology counselling sessions are completely waste of time, with staffs who are unprofessional, judgmental and make superficial comments. Basically to survive in this school is to turn to the right people for good advice, and the administrative offices are definitely not among them.

I completed my program during the beginning covid years, so there was a lot of changes at that time. In general, for the amount of international students that goes to the school I thought that there was almost not enough clubs or purely social (non-work focused) organizations where students had the opportunity to learn from each other. There just was not enough sources for student support and mental health during this time. It was a challenging time in general sure, however it was also a little challenging being a student there during the covid crisis. Overall I wished it was a better experience.

The academics were okay, but I think the school should have put more emphasis on making sure its students were doing well and taken care of. It focuses a lot on prestige but there needs to be more care for its students in general. That is my unfiltered opinion.

I agree that there is not too much scholarship transparency. There might be some bias towards offering students scholarships from some countries over others. I wish it was also more transparent and made equal–where the school looks at actual earnings and income.